Nine years after 9/11, hysteria about Muslims in American life has gripped the country. With it has gone an outburst of arson attacks on mosques, campaigns to stop their construction, and the branding of the Muslim-American community, overwhelmingly moderate, as a hotbed of potential terrorist recruits.

The Muslims were bloodthirsty and treacherous. They conducted a sneak attack against the French army and slaughtered every single soldier, 20,000 in all. More than 1,000 years ago, in the mountain passes of Spain, the Muslim horde cut down the finest soldiers in Charlemagne’s command, including his brave nephew Roland.

The church’s synod on the Middle East and the continuing controversy over a proposed Muslim center at Ground Zero have sparked several comparative looks at the treatment Catholics received when they first began to assert themselves in the United States.

Many New Yorkers were suspicious of the newcomers’ plans to build a house of worship in Manhattan. Some feared the project was being underwritten by foreigners. Others said the strangers’ beliefs were incompatible with democratic principles.

Depending on whom you ask, the new mosque planned for a quiet block in southern Brooklyn is either the latest target in a wave of coordinated anti-Muslim sentiment, part of an insidious effort to spread political Islam throughout America or simply a parking nightmare waiting to happen.

After we published our article on The Connection Between Zionism and Organized Islamophobia — The Facts, we had some knee jerk responses by people who obviously hadn’t read the article claiming that we were dabbling in anti-Semitism.

The U.S. Justice Department has said it is monitoring 11 cases of potential land-use discrimination against Muslims, a sharp increase in cases under a federal law designed to protect religious minorities in zoning disputes.

Leaders of local and national groups gathered at the site of the planned center, two blocks from ground zero, and declared not only that the planners had a constitutional right to build it, but also that they would help the project move forward in the face of heated opposition.